BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | In City Council District 3, covering the Village, Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen, Democrat Corey Johnson overwhelmingly won re-election to a second term, with 93.76 percent of the vote. His sole opponent, Occupy Wall Street activist and Sky Rink skating instructor Marni Halasa, who ran on the Eco Justice Party line, got 5.66 percent of the vote. Johnson is considered a leading candidate to be elected speaker of the City Council at the start of the new year.
In a statement, Johnson said, “I want to thank the people of District 3 for entrusting me with a second term as your councilmember. We have achieved many things together in the district and at City Hall these past four years, and I look forward to partnering with you to achieve much more. The challenges we face are incredibly complex and entrenched, but the future of our city depends on our ability to address them. An affordable housing crisis, small businesses in crisis, historic income inequality, a homelessness crisis, aging infrastructure and obsolete public transportation are just a few of the issues we must address. I believe that we can fulfill the great promise of our city and ensure that our neighborhoods are affordable, diverse, safe and full of life. I know that with your partnership, we will prevail.”
In the District 2 race, covering the East Village and stretching from the Lower East Side up to the E. 30s, Democratic candidate Carlina Rivera won handily.
With 99 percent of the scanners reported, Rivera won a total of 83 percent of the vote, running on the combined Democratic and Working Families lines. Jimmy McMillan took about 12 percent of the total on two ballot lines — GOP and Rent Is 2 Damn High — while Jasmine Sanchez got about 2 percent as the Liberal Party candidate, and a Libertarian and a Green candidate each garnered less than 2 percent.
Rivera will succeed Rosie Mendez, who will be term-limited out of office at the end of the year after three terms in office.
In other races, as expected, Mayor Bill de Blasio won re-election, with 66 percent of the vote. Republican candidate Nicole Malliotakis ran pretty strongly, though, with 28 percent of the vote. Sal Albanese, running on the Reform Party line, with lots of integrity but not enough cash, barely cracked the 2 percent mark, and a number of other candidates got around 1 percent, more or less.
Democrats Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Letitia James and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer all comfortably coasted to re-election.
Facing no candidates on party ballot lines, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance won re-election with about 91 percent of ballots cast. The rest of the votes were write-ins, presumably mostly for former Brooklyn prosecutor Marc Fliedner, who announced his write-in candidacy after news broke about Harvey Weinstein’s history as a serial sex abuser — and the revelation of Vance’s failure to prosecute the movie mogul for sexually assaulting an actress in Tribeca. Tribeca attorney Pete Gleason, a member of the Downtown Independent Democrats club, also mounted a write-in candidacy for D.A., but at the last minute, threw his support behind Fliedner, to no avail.
In addition, on Proposal No. 1 on the ballot, voters resoundingly voted “No” — by 79 percent to 21 percent — to the idea of holding a state constitutional convention. The opportunity for a constitutional convention comes around only every 20 years, and one has not been held since 1967.
But for voters, even in a time of anti-establishment politics, the possibilities of enacting term limits for state legislators in dysfunctional Albany and increasing ballot access didn’t outweigh fears that conservatives would try to dismantle things like union pensions and rent regulation.
Village District Leader Arthur Schwartz — one of the few local politicians who wanted a constitutional convention — scoffed at the notion that liberal sacred cows would be weakened because we are in the uncertain political climate of the “Trump era.”
“Hillary Clinton won New York State by 2 million votes,” he said, incredulously. “Have all those people changed since then because of Trump?”
Michael Brautigan, a retired catering and production manager, who was voting Tuesday morning at the Westbeth artists affordable-housing complex in the West Village, said he backed the straight Democratic line.
“I voted right down the ticket,” he said.
Asked if he went for Johnson, he enthusiastically said, yes.
“Corey Johnson just works so hard for our community,” he said. “He’s trustworthy, diligent.”
Like 64 percent of voters who weighed in on ballot Proposal No. 2, he said he supported cutting off legislators’ pensions if they are convicted of certain kinds of felonies.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Cut. It’s long overdue. Ridiculous.”
But he didn’t vote for a “Con Con,” feeling it would be too dangerous to open up the state constitution at the moment.
“What’s going on in Washington now,” he said, “government’s so changeable.”
Ballot Proposal No. 3, a sort of land swap, allowing municipalities to use protected land if they provide an equal amount to replace it, failed at the polls. Voters — at least in New York City — generally seemed to find this proposal a bit confusing to figure out.
A young couple, who did not give their names, who were also voting at Westbeth were very down on the mayor.
Asked who they weighed in for, the husband said, “Anyone but de Blasio,” adding, “If he was Republican, I would have voted Democratic. I didn’t vote for a lot of the other candidates — I just came to vote against de Blasio.”
They both darkened the oval for Malliotakis.
The husband, who works in finance, recalled they recently had walked up Eighth Ave. to watch a movie on W. 23rd St. and saw a man who walked “15 blocks” without any pants or underwear on, and no police ever responded. They blame the mayor for a hands-off attitude on quality of life and the fact that fewer cops seem to be around.
His wife, an actress, cradled a baby on her chest in a harness. They have lived in the Village, on Jane St., for six years.
“It would be nice to have Bloomberg back,” he said.
